Tracking events and trends in Israel, the U.S., Russia and throughout the Epicenter (the Middle East & North Africa)

Like a scene ripped from “Dead Heat,” North Korea threatens nuclear strike on U.S.

>> Note: I’ll be on the Fox News Channel on Sunday with Shannon Bream to discuss Israel, Iran, Syria and “Damascus Countdown”

Readers of this blog may recall that in 2008, I published a thriller called, Dead Heat. The premise: a lunatic running North Korea launches a preemptive nuclear strike at four American cities (New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Seattle). Now in the latest installment of “life is stranger than fiction,” the lunatic leader of North Korea really is threatening a preemptive nuclear strike on the U.S. Consider the latest headlines:

This is dangerous in its own right. But it’s also dangerous because of the growing body of evidence that suggests North Korea and Iran are working hand-in-glove on building nuclear warheads together. North Korea clearly already has operational nuclear warheads, and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. That makes Pyongyang a serious threat to the national security of South Korea, Japan, the U.S. and our other Asian allies. But if Pyongyang is, in fact, helping the mullahs in Tehran build their own arsenal of nukes, then this poses a clear and present danger to Israel, too. It suggests war in the Middle East may be coming soon as Israeli leaders may soon feel they have to launch its own preemptive strike on Iran to neutralize the Iranian threat before it can fully materialize. This, of course, is the premise of The Tehran Initiative and Damascus Countdown — what would such a strike look like? What would the blowback look like? And might Iran be able to draw Syria into the war to annihilate Israel?

Let me be clear: I’m not saying definitively there will be a war in the Mideast in 2013. Indeed, I’m praying earnestly for peace, and I encourage you to do so, too. But after six months of relative calm on the Israel-Iran front, things are clearly heating up again. True, we have seen in the past that tensions can spike, and then wane. Leaders in the region do their saber-rattling, and then quiet down. But we cannot rule out the possibility that this time is different. I’ll continue to keep you posted as best I can.